


Red Hands

by Beastrage



Series: the red desert sky [1]
Category: Ancient Egyptian Religion
Genre: Ancient Egyptian Literature & Mythology, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-08-13 04:58:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7963345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beastrage/pseuds/Beastrage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nephthys was always good at lying to herself. Especially when it was about Set. Or, Set returns and everything should be fine, but it isn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red Hands

Set is washing his hands in the Nile when she sees him.  
It is unbelievable, seeing him like this, so whole, so real.  
“Set?”  
He whirls around, shoulders relaxing when he sees her. “Nephthys,” he breathes, drawing near to her. He draws near, but does not touch her.  
“How are you here?” You should be in the desert. You should be far gone, a mere memory.  
He does not answer her question. Instead, he turns again to the river.  
Red hands dip into the trickle from the wide river’s mud banks. There is a strong scent of iron in the air, a smell she remembers from men’s wounds on the battlefield. Dark smears trail in the muddy earth up from the water.  
“Do you want a meal, Nephthys? I have a fish cooking,” he offers, head tilting towards a nearby fire. A small, mostly smoke fire cooking a filleted fish hanging above it.  
So that is why his hands are blood-covered, she thinks and thinks no more of it.  
She does not feel particularly hungry but figures, after what happened the last time they met, accepting the meal would be a small enough peace offering.  
“If you don’t want it.” Nephthys squats down by the flames, staring into the dying coals.  
Set grins, a old echo of easier days. “It’s for you, river goddess.”  
“And you think I don’t eat enough fish, being a river goddess?” she asks, only half joking.  
He looks at her, red eyes glowing in the low evening light. “Just have some.”

* * *

 The fish is delicious.

Far from the charcoal-burnt meals he always made in the past, somehow always dumping them in the fire before the meat was done.  
He watches her every bite. So still. No nervous energy. None of the deep fire that kept him moving, pacing back and forth.  
His eyes burn just like the coals.  
He licks his lips as he looks her over. Just slightly, difficult to notice if she hadn’t known him as well as she does.  
“It’s going to be a cold night tonight,” he says, looking up at the stars, up at the sparks flying up into the night.  
She knows him. She knows what he wants.  
And she know what she wants.  
“How was...?” Nephthys hesitates, not sure how to say it.  
“The desert?” Set finishes for her, leaning back. He closes his eyes. “It...changed me. I’m a stronger man now. The river?”  
“It’s not...” It’s not flying, it’s not like it used to be and can never again.  
“I understand.” And really, who else could? They are two broken souls, two losers who never knew what was at stake when war began.

* * *

She’s been cold for so long.

It is only together she is warm. Intertwined, his body heats up her frozen blood.  
He leaves some time in the night. The empty space he leaves almost devours her, cold creeping up from the earth.  
But he returns, sliding in next to her like he was never gone in the first place.  
They are fire and ice, perfect together.  
The morning comes. Too soon.  
She wakes to find him tending a fire, a rekindled fire, back to her.  
“How do you feel, Nephthys?” he asks, not bothering to turn around.  
She thinks about it. How does she feel? “Warm. Better than in the past.” And it’s true. Somehow, his heat has chased away the chill in her bones, the chill that has been there since...since the end of the war.  
“Good.” Set pokes the fire a bit, seemingly deep in thought. Thinking about what, she doesn’t know, when she used to know him as another half of herself.  
Frightening, this new lack of knowledge. It feels like a hole in her mouth, like feeling a gap where a tooth was torn out.  
“I will go see my brothers,” Set says suddenly, the words totally unexpected.  
“You hated them,” she points out, sitting up on their bedroll.  
He looks at her, red eyes aflame. For moment, she fears he will hit her. An alien fear, coming from him. But then he laughs. A full loud sound coming up from his belly.  
“So I did,” he chuckles, wiping a stray tear from his eye, “so I did. It’s, just, now there are different circumstances that might make them slightly less annoying. So, come?”  
He holds out a hand to her.  
She takes it. What else would she do?

* * *

Osiris is dead.  
She feels it in her bones, the mourning cries started up, her sister’s loudest of all.  
Isis is a widow now, she considers, watching her sister wail and weep.  
She should be there with her, rubbing her back, crying by her side.  
She just...can’t.  
Because some part of her still remembers the pain of losing everything. Some part can’t help but envy her sister’s glorious wings of rainbow, whispering she took your wings, you deserve hers.  
Her free hand tightens into a fist, seeing all of Isis’ handmaidens attempting to comfort their mistress but failing.  
She could do, could calm Isis’ screams. But she can’t. No, she won’t.  
Set looks at her, a side glance full of understanding and...pleasure. His hand squeezes her gently. Before she can really consider it, he lets go and steps forward.  
“Where is Horus? Where is my elder brother?” he demands, voice proud and loud, filling up the entire room.  
Isis recovers, barely, enough to respond, kohl caked under her eyes in tear streaks. “Why are you here, Set? You were imprisoned!” she accuses, her voice that of a queen’s. Regal.  
Set spreads his hands. “Is it wrong for me to come to celebrate my brother’s birthday? But it appears I have arrived a day late, on his deathday instead.”  
There is something wrong with that story, she knows, thinking the words through. They are sly, cunning words, threaded with something not quite right...if he was a day late, how could he have caught that fish?  
“So, where is Horus?”  
Isis says nothing, glaring at Set as she attempts to wipe away the watery black on her cheeks.  
A handmaiden steps up instead. “He sleeps, my lord,” she pipes up, bowing to the visiting brother, “In a sleep so deep none can awake him.”  
“He is as if dead, then.” It isn’t a question. Everyone there knows Set’s statement is true.  
He paces, thoughtfully rubbing his chin. “Your Highness, do you have any heirs?”  
Isis flushes and some women twitter behind her. It is not much of a secret, that the king and queen have been trying and trying to have children without much success.  
“There are no heirs,” the widowed queen grinds out slowly.  
Set nods. “I see. I believe that I am next in line then. I will be the new king.”  
“What about my husband, Set? Your brother?” Isis challenges him, distrust in her eyes.  
Set smiles. “I will give him the burial he deserves.”

* * *

Osiris’ tomb is a fine thing, built of Nubian gold and silver.  
Grand enough for such a grand king.  
She shivers, goosebumps rising on her bare shoulders. The evening wind is cold, much colder compared to burning days.  
“Nephthys.” Her name is whispered in a familiar haunting tone.  
“Set.” She turns to him, her lover in the robes of a king.  
He rules now, in a much different way than Osiris did. With the sand creeping in. She ignores the red brilliance with difficulty, but the rumors are too loud to ignore. The whispers that their new king is cursed, and his curse is falling upon them, in the form of red sand choking their crops.  
“Your sister mourns yet again,” he says, a hint of annoyance in his voice. “Can’t you do something about it?”  
“Set, she lost her husband and then her child. I am not going to be able to do anything about it.”  
Weeks afterward, Isis had grown, a new bump in her belly. It seemed that Osiris had succeeded in giving her a possible heir. A new hope, for all.  
Except when the bump stop growing and the bleeding began.  
Now there is no child, no future heir.  
Only Set.

* * *

She talks with Isis. Not because she feels sorry for her or anything like that. It’s just been a while since they talked. As sisters.  
Isis looks like a wild thing, makeup smeared all over her face, hair in tangled snarls.  
She acts like one too.  
“You have to stop him!” she hisses.  
“Stop Set? Why? I love him.”  
“You loved him once,” Isis says in voice of silk, eyes full of an animal cunning, “Do you still love him? This man that he has become? Do you love him now, Nephthys, even when you know he has killed both my husband and child?”  
She runs, leaves the room as quickly as she came.  
She can’t think about it but she does think about it. Killed both my husband and child...she wants to cry out, “lies, how dare you Isis!”, but she can’t.  
She can’t be sure her sister isn’t right.  
She’s not sure that Set’s innocent.  
She’s not so sure anymore that those red hands were red with fish blood.

* * *

Doubts ringing in her mind, she strides forward in long solid steps.  
Towards the place that answer all of her questions.  
Osiris’ tomb.  
She sweeps past the painted walls. The figures on them, once so serene, now seem mocking. Have you figured it out yet, Nephthys, what your lover has become?  
All the way down the halls to the center of it all. The sarcophagus that holds Osiris’ body.  
She lifts the heavy lid, hands shaking. Not with effort, though, no matter hard it is to lift.  
She looks in and gasps.  
Nothing.  
There is no body in this tomb. It is empty.  
“You know now then.” She knows that voice, knows the hand fallen on her shoulder  
“Why?” she chokes out. How could you do this to your brother, to prevent him from ever having an afterlife?  
Set chuckles. “Oh, trust me, I wanted to do more. Much more. But I couldn’t wipe out his name, so I did the next best thing.”  
Eyes full of fire, full of ever-burning hatred. “I gave him the burial he deserved. With the crocodiles.”


End file.
